Good morning everyone. Thought I'd share this wee blog post. See if it interests anyone. Starting my morning right now with a quick cup of tea and brushing my teeth at 04:45. Have to get ready and make my way to Linlithgow station to start my duties. I'll be working as a railtour steward today with SRPS Railtours. So let me know if you see our train out and about. Train departs linlithgow at 06:10 and we'll get into our first stop at Edinburgh Waverley around 06:25am. Hopefully a good shift. I am the first aider for today's service so I have to make sure I've got all my kit ready to go, as medical problems on trains are more common than you may think. Todays service consists of a mix of MK2's & MK1's a RMB and an RBR. Some our own carriages, some provided by LSL. The haulage will also consist of 4 Class 20's, and 2 class 37's. (37403 & 37409). See attached photos. Good morning guys. See you later.
CURRENT TIME: 07:37 Currently onboard and departed Edinburgh Waverley. Meals and drinks are currently going out, we got all the passengers on very quickly and everything set up. Currently on a quick break while we pass through Shotts heading towards Glasgow.
TIME: 13:15 Currently on my lunch break. Passed over the ribblehead viaduct about 5 mins ago and speeding down the Settle and Carlisle line to Preston. We had half an hour in Carlisle in which I spent doing crowd control and unloading any rubbish. Managed to grab a bit of breakfast around 11. And got the rest of the crew sorted with something. We've been selling raffle tickets, another round of tea and coffee and some souvenirs consisting of badges, mugs, keyrings and some custom made Lego. Very sunny. Gotten alot warmer. No medical problems so far apart from a member of staff slicing their finger open. Thankfully not too deep though but still got it patched up. Bit of chaos with getting out the breakfast orders for customers and hot rolls as we nearly missed a carriage, but all is well now. Anyways. Bit tired now but all is going well. Hope everyone else is having a good day!
TIME: 15:38 So... apparently there's a fault on the train. Currently working hard to figure out what's wrong, how to fix it while serving drinks and dealing with drunks. (People have been drinking since 6:15. Madness.) Anyways. Taking drinks orders for aperitifs and won't be long til Carlisle.
Around 09:30 last night we discovered that 37403 had lost its ets (the power generator) capabilities. So we had no heating and were running off of batteries. So we were running around switching everything to emergency power and closing all the windows and doors. Chaos. Though we eventually made it on time to linlithgow at 11pm. Such a hectic day. My feet hurt like hell. But it was good.
Nice, glad everything went for the most part well except for 37403's etcs towards the end. Edit: just found this on YouTube lol
